President Barack Obama speaks at US Central Command (CentCom) at MacDill Air Force Base

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President Barack Obama sits next to Commander of Central Command Gen. Lloyd Austin III during in a briefing from top military leaders while at U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida

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"Osama bin Laden is no more. Because of you, the core al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan & Pakistan has been decimated" —Obama to our troops

President Barack Obama participates in a briefing from top military leaders while visiting U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base. From L-R are: United States Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Obama, Commander of Central Command Gen. Lloyd Austin III and U.S. Special Operations Commander Joseph Votel.

President Barack Obama greets members of the military upon his arrival at MacDill Air Force Base

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"In three months, our combat mission will be over in Afghanistan & our war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end." —President Obama

If there were fairness in this world, Rita Rizzo would be a media star. Rizzo, 60, owns a management consulting firm for nonprofit groups and government offices in Akron, Ohio, with her husband, Lou Vincent, 64. Vincent, who suffers from Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, has gone without health insurance for 10 years. “We got 30 denial letters,” Rizzo told me last week. Three years ago, Rizzo got a hip replacement. Her own insurance premiums were going to rise by $500 a month, to about $800, so she chose instead to triple her deductible to $6,000 to keep the increase to a mere $150 a month. The couple used a $5,000 tax-deductible health savings account to cover her out-of-pocket expenses; Vincent’s medication, which ran to $178 a month; and his blood work-ups, at $2,400 a year. In December, Rizzo signed up for Obamacare. She now has a policy that covers her and Vincent together, including all his meds and lab work, for $379 a month, with a $2,000 family deductible. “I feel like I died and went to insurance heaven,” she says.

Today I turn 40, & I'm grateful to @BarackObama for the gift I am finally able to give myself. #Healthcare. Thank you Mr. President! #ACA

While Rizzo was working her way to thousands of dollars in annual savings, for example, Southern California Realtor Deborah Cavallaro was making the rounds of NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CBS, Fox and public radio’s Marketplace program, talking about how her premium was about to rise some 65% because of the “Unaffordable” Care Act. What her viewers and listeners didn’t learn was that she hadn’t checked the rates on California’s insurance exchange, where (as we determined for her) she would have found a replacement policy for less than she’d been paying. The millions of beneficiaries of the measure — families excluded from insurance because of high premiums or preexisting medical conditions, low-income individuals made newly eligible for Medicaid, seniors receiving a new subsidy for prescriptions, women granted the legal right to affordable maternity coverage for the first time — seem to be absent from the news media or political ad campaigns. But you can’t turn on your TV without seeing a well-produced 30- or 60-second spot featuring a purported tale of woe.

The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency’s once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress — would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials. Under the proposal, they said, the N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order.

As part of the proposal, the administration has decided to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the program as it exists for at least one more 90-day cycle, senior administration officials said. But under the plan the administration has developed and now advocates, the officials said, it would later undergo major changes. The new type of surveillance court orders envisioned by the administration would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received, the officials said. They would also allow the government to swiftly seek related records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It’s the second time in as many years that conservative business owners have argued to the Court that all or part of the health-care law is unconstitutional. While this challenge may look to be limited to just birth control, there is in fact a lot more at stake.The Supreme Court will hear in one hearing the legal challenges of two for-profit businesses, Hobby Lobby and the Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation. Hobby Lobby is a national arts-and-crafts retail chain, while Conestoga is a Pennsylvania-based furniture maker. Both companies object to providing health insurance coverage for some kinds of contraception, claiming that the ACA’s requirement that businesses provide employees equal health insurance coverage violates the companies’ religious beliefs.

Prepping for tommorow's Hobby Lobby argument by reading the bible verse where God tells Moses to exclude birth control from insurance plans

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood (and the myriad other for-profit businesses challenging the mandate) are arguing that the birth control benefit violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. The RFRA is a federal law that says the government may not “substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion,” unless that burden is “necessary to further a compelling government interest” and uses the “least restrictive means” necessary. Conestoga also claims that the mandate violates its religious exercise rights under the First Amendment generally, citing the Citizens United case for precedent. In plain English, that means the Court will be tasked with answering several distinct questions. The first is the most direct: Do secular, for-profit corporations fit the definition of “individual” under the statute? But to get to that answer, the Court will have to wade into the much more troubling question of whether individual business owners can transfer their religious beliefs to that of their business in a way that allows businesses to exercise religious rights.

President Obama’s European trip, which is serving as a de facto background for international meetings around the Ukraine crisis, continues Tuesday with the second day of a Nuclear Security Summit.Though the news out of Monday’s meeting was a move by the Group of Seven (G-7) nations to further isolate Russia on the world stage, the U.S. announced the completion of projects with Belgium and Italy to remove nuclear material and reaffirmed a working relationship with Japan to dispose of highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium stocks worldwide in order to prevent the materials from falling into the hands of criminals or terrorists.

Although Russia and the U.S. remain at odds – and trading sanctions – over the Russian incursion into the Crimean peninsula, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said Friday that the two countries continued to cooperate on the issue. “Nuclear security is an area where the United States has and continues to have an enduring interest in cooperation with Russia and other important countries where the security of nuclear materials remains of concern,” Rice said at a White House briefing last week. “We have every interest in continuing to cooperate with Russia and other countries, even where we have differences with them on other issues, on the issue of nuclear security.”

Miami Herald: Enrollment Drives Kick Into High Gear As Deadline Approaches To Sign Up For President Obama’s Health CareLaw

With a week to go before the March 31 deadline to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, South Florida enrollment efforts have surged. Organizers from elected officials to religious institutions are marshaling one last campaign to cover as many eligible consumers as possible. An army of volunteers and federally funded and trained counselors have fanned out across Miami-Dade, setting up shop in community rooms, public parks, local churches and health centers, hosting enrollment drives and health fairs nearly every day. At the Calle Ocho street festival in downtown Miami, a Liberty City health fair and the 93rd Street Community Baptist Church in West Little River, ambassadors for Obamacare have been signing people up for health insurance in South Florida.

Miami-Dade leads all Florida counties in sign-ups and has the nation’s second-highest enrollment rate among counties, according to April Washington, a regional government relations director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who attended the Liberty City enrollment drive. Florida, with the second highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation, leads all 36 states in sign-ups on the federally run exchange, with more than 442,000 people selecting a health plan, and an additional 124,000 assessed eligible for Medicaid. Many, such as Makiesha Victor, 20, bought health insurance for the first time. “I didn’t know anything about health insurance,” said Victor, a server at a McDonald’s restaurant. “I feel good knowing I’m covered. Before, I felt I couldn’t see a doctor.’’ Karina Valdivia, 32, an uninsured single mother of two young children, signed up at the 93rd Street church, too. Valdivia, who lives in Miami’s Brickell area and works for a cleaning service six days a week, found a silver-level plan that she said will cost her $21.36 a month in premiums. “I can afford it now,” she said, a surprised tone in her voice. “I thought it was going to cost more, but it was less.”

Eliza Thompson: American Nuns Announce Their Support For Obamacare Contraception Access

The National Coalition of American Nuns recently came out in support of the Affordable Care Act’s provision for contraception coverage. In a petition addressed to the U.S. Supreme Court (who will soon hear two cases where employers are denying their employees coverage because they don’t personally support contraception), the nuns wrote, “We want to make clear that the sin is not a person using birth control. The sin is denying women the right and the means to plan their families.” Well, that’s awesome.

Sister Donna Quinn, the head of NCAN, told ReligionDispatches.org that “it isn’t ‘faith and freedom’ when reproductive autonomy isn’t extended by the Catholic Church to women.” She added, “It isn’t freedom when a woman can be held hostage by the owner of a business.” The petition (which is extremely close to reaching its goal of 5,000 signatures) also had this to say about religious freedom: “We know that religious freedom means that each person has the right to exercise their own religious beliefs; religious freedom cannot mean that an individual or a corporation gets to impose their religious beliefs on their employees.”

But the case of National Security Adviser Susan Rice, counsel Kathy Ruemmler and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco — the three women on the couch — offers a unique counterpoint to the argument that only men carry influence in the Obama White House. Nobody in the West Wing outranks them on national security issues, marking the first time that women have occupied all three positions in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field. Rice and Monaco are the ones who wake up Obama when something bad happens overnight. Collectively, the three women handle the most sensitive issues that cross the president’s desk — including the administration’s drone policy, military actions and the review of government surveillance techniques, which was the topic of discussion when the photograph was taken.

Waiting to see my new doctor. I am having my first appointment using my new insurance under ACA. Thank you President Obama!

“The notion that this is an all-male place is a joke,” Rice said, pointing out that women occupy half the seats at the senior adviser meetings. “I’m always struck by the disconnect between perception and reality.” Ruemmler said she had to be persuaded to do the interview, underscoring her point that women, more so than men, tend to shun the spotlight. “That, I think, is the general philosophy for most of the women here and that is just consistent with the way, to be candid, most of us were raised,” Ruemmler said. “It is about doing the work, getting the work done, and the work will speak for itself.” Rice chairs meetings in the Situation Room, where the people around the table are mostly men, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and CIA Director John Brennan. But she said she’s generally not conscious about her status as one of a handful women in the room.

@BarackObama Thank you Mr. President. With the Affordable Care Act I've been able to get my neck checked out from injuring it two years ago.

The women try to do dinner once a month with the female Cabinet secretaries and White House senior staff. The confabs — part mentoring, part venting — were started by Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary in the first term, and continued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Ruemmler sometimes coaxes Jarrett and Mastromonaco out of the building for Friday afternoon lunches. They said they weren’t particularly struck by the photograph of the three of them sitting on the couch with Obama. That wasn’t an unusual moment, they said. It’s just what they do.

On one Friday earlier this month, more than 11,000 Muslims in mosques across the country heard a sermon about the Affordable Care Act. Hindu and National Baptist groups, meanwhile, are posting online announcements about the White House’s “Faith and Community ACA Days of Action”. Jewish women’s groups have visited college campuses to get students who think they’re “invincible” to sign up for health insurance. “What other time in our history will we be able to help our communities focus on wellness, to help every citizen access a means to be healthy and treat medical conditions, breaking the trend of making emergency rooms and ‘urgent care’ our primary care physicians?” asked Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, director of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Social Action Commission.

The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, has spearheaded information sessions at predominantly Latino churches around the country and radio spots on Hispanic Christian radio stations. Salguero noted that one in four persons who are eligible but uninsured are Latino. “It’s an urgent need in our community,” he said. “It’s a real service to that underserved community.” Salguero said he shares other evangelicals’ concerns about Obamacare’s coverage for what they consider to be abortifacients but nevertheless wants to make sure people have a chance to be educated about what the law does and does not include.

“My position is I’m a pro-life person so I don’t want anybody dying of preventable diseases if they can get health care,” he said. Likewise, in a rare move, the Roman Catholic bishop of San Bernardino, Calif., wrote a letter that was read at Masses in his diocese on March 15-16, noting that undocumented parents should “sign your child up for health insurance immediately” and that opting out could result in fines that will increase over time. “It is true that our Church has raised objection to elements of the law that relate to contraception and abortion services that might be provided through it,” Bishop Gerald R. Barnes wrote in the March 11 letter, “However, these factors do not mean that we, as Catholics, should disobey the new health care law. If we happen to have an insurance plan that includes services that are objectionable to our faith, which most plans in California do, our response is to not utilize these services.”

President Barack Obama rests his foot on a football during the Domestic Policy Council Meeting in the Oval Office, March 25, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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A young woman reacts after seeing President Barack Obama, during his visit to Prairie Lights, an independent bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa, March 25, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Barack Obama greets a boy, whose first name is also Barack, following the President’s remarks on health care at the University of Iowa Field House in Iowa City, Iowa, March 25, 2010. The President spoke about health insurance reform and how it will impact families and small businesses. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama surprises Personal Secretary Katie Johnson with a gift and birthday cake in the Oval Office, March 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama gestures during a briefing with a bipartisan, bicameral group of members of Congress on the situation in Libya, in the Situation Room of the White House, March 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama talks with Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md., following a briefing with a bipartisan, bicameral group of Members of Congress, in the Situation Room of the White House, March 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama greets Medal of Honor recipients on the South Lawn of the White House, March 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama visits with Archbishop Demetrios Trakatellis in the Green Room of the White House prior to a Greek Independence Day reception, March 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama talks with Sung Kim, U.S. Ambassador to Republic of Korea, aboard Marine One during an early morning flight from Osan Air Base to the landing zone at U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, Republic of Korea, March 25, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama and President Lee Myung-bak of the Republic of Korea walk down the grand staircase following their bilateral meeting at the Blue House in Seoul, Republic of Korea, March 25, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a Passover Seder Dinner for family, staff and friends, in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, March 25, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama signs a photograph as he greets people on the tarmac upon arrival at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, La., July 25, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)

UT included the above photo in today’s R&S – the young man pictured is Tyren Edward Anthony Scott. Tyren’s mother Lisa contacted us at the time to let us know that Tyren was the same young man who asked the President “why do people hate you?’ at a town hall in New Orleans three years earlier:

“He was nine when he asked the President that question and in the latest picture he’s 12. President Obama stood there with us, talked for about three minutes, he remembered Tyren and signed an 11 x 14 picture of their first encounter.”

We sent our best wishes to Tyren, Lisa and all the Scott family this morning, so it was really lovely to receive this comment from Lisa:

Good Afternoon,

Thanks for the great comments on my son Tyren Edward Anthony Scott.

Tyren starts school on Aug. 6. He’s now 13 and in the 8th grade.

Tyren and I are doing great. I visit the website several times a day and was surprised to see Tyren. He’s growing up to be a fine young man. I am not saying that because he is my son, I say that because he has a great heart. He was upset with the verdict in the Zimmerman trial. As a matter of fact after President Obama spoke on Friday he emailed the President on Sunday.

I had to have that talk with him on how to be careful especially as a young black teen.

He’s still very respectful (yes sir/no sir). Tyren is still a good student and he’s involved in the community. He loves people and he does not see color until it slaps him in his face. I had to tell him he is not a thug.

Tyren loves fishing, deer hunting, plays in high school band (sax), football, baseball and he still helps his Uncle Tweed with the chickens LOL.

I tell people all the time you can not raise a child by yourself. So I ask The Obama Diary family to keep us in your prayers.

July 2012 marked the two-year anniversary of the enactment of the Tribal Law and Order Act …. Lisa Iyotte, a Lakota woman, a survivor, shared her personal story of her brutal rape that occurred in her home on a reservation as her young daughters watched. The man who raped her was never prosecuted for his crimes against her.

As President Obama put it:

“When one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes, that is an assault on our national conscience; it is an affront to our shared humanity; it is something that we cannot allow to continue.”

I just thought of this video tonight, after the events of today. The President wasn’t meant to appear until Lisa Iyotte introduced him, but while speaking for every victim of rape (because, needless to say, it’s not just the native American community that suffers from this horror), she was overcome, so he came out early to comfort her.

President Barack Obama talks with Tina Tchen, Chief of Staff to the First Lady, on the Colonnade of the White House, Jan. 10, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama greets the crowd during a visit to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, Jan. 10

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Greg Sargent: Newt Gingrich unleashes an absolutely brutal new ad in South Carolina ripping Romney’s previous moderation and flip flops on social issues, another sign of Newt’s determination to tear Romney down:

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Jonathan Cohn: Forget Mitt Romney’s verbal gaffes for a moment. Something more important has happened in the last few days. The linchpin of Romney’s most powerful argument has turned out to be bogus.

I’m talking about Romney’s claim about job creation – specifically, that Obama lost 2 million jobs as president while Romney, as a leader of Bain Capital, created 100,000 jobs. It’s taken a few weeks, and what seems like a few hundred posts by the indefatigable Greg Sargent, to get the media to focus on this claim. But now they are. And it turns out to be even more laughable than it appeared upon initial inspection.

Here’s the story, in case you haven’t read it elsewhere:

From the get-go, Romney’s argument was weak. Among the many flaws: Romney calculates the Obama era job losses by using, as a baseline, the employment rate as of January, 2009, when Obama first took office. That’s absurd. The economy was in free-fall when Obama took over….

OFA: “I had that deer-in-the-headlights look – these kinds of things just don’t happen to me.”

That’s how Kathie, a Head Start teacher for special-needs kids, felt when she got the call about being one of four campaign supporters to sit down to a meal with President Obama.

…. “…. the conversation just flowed. He asked about our families and what was happening in our area, and the work that we do. The President ordered a burger and fries, a spinach salad, and iced tea. And then the waiter came to me and I was thinking, ‘How am I going to eat?’ But the President was so warm and considerate – he offered us some of his fries! And I thought, ‘This is the leader of the free world.’

Greg Sargent (Washington Post): Conservatives are furious with GOP candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry for attacking Mitt Romney’s Bain tenure as capitalism run amok. Gingrich has claimed that Bain “looted” other companies, and Perry today slammed enterprises like Bain as “vultures” who “eat the carcass” of its victims, prompting a fresh round of outrage from the right.

Conservatives have good reason for being angry about this. In attacking Romney’s Bain years in these terms, his fellow Republicans are mainstreaming and giving bipartisan legitimacy to one of the chief arguments Obama and Dems will use against Romney in the general election. They are badly undermining Romney’s whole pushback against it – giving Dems an advantage in the coming war to define Romney’s Bain years, which will be as central to the general election narrative as the war over John Kerry’s Vietnam service was in 2004.

WH: …. Since Chrysler and GM emerged from bankruptcy in June of 2009, the auto industry has added 170,000 jobs – the best period of job growth for the industry in more than a decade.

When President Obama took office, the American auto industry was shedding jobs by the hundreds of thousands and GM and Chrysler faced the possibility of liquidation – which would have caused at least 1 million more jobs to be lost. The President made the tough choice to help provide the auto industry the temporary support it needed to grow and prosper.

Today, GM and Chrysler have repaid their government loans, and the “Big Three” automakers – GM, Ford, and Chrysler – are all adding jobs, generating profit, and investing in their U.S. facilities. Auto sales climbed in December for the seventh consecutive month and GM, Chrysler, and Ford saw their market share increase to over 47 percent in 2011, the second straight year that Detroit gained market share against their foreign competitors, something that had not previously happened since 1995….

TPM: In a positive sign for the economy, November saw the biggest growth in consumer credit for 10 years. It should have happened much earlier. What threw it off was the GOP taking the debt ceiling hostage.

Steve Benen: A few weeks ago, PolitiFact made a serious mistake in selecting its “Lie of the Year” … Democratic claims that House Republicans voted to “end” Medicare earned the ignoble designation, despite the fact that the Democratic argument is easily supportable.

It was easy to predict what would happen next. As part of the party’s 2012 campaign message, Democrats would run ads criticizing GOP lawmakers for their anti-Medicare vote … GOP leaders would go to every station in the country, telling them not to run campaign commercials that include claims proven to be untrue. That PolitiFact’s decision was ridiculous wouldn’t matter.

And sure enough, we’re already seeing this start to play out. Greg Sargent has the latest: Earlier this week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee aired a TV ad, timed to the GOP presidential debate, attacking GOP incumbent Rep. Charlie Bass for voting to “end Medicare.” The Bass campaign sent letters to two New Hampshire stations – WMUR and WHDH – demanding the ads be yanked. Crucially, the Bass campaign repeatedly cited PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year designation to bolster its case.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka lauds Cecilia Muñoz’s appointment to head the Domestic Policy Council: “Cecilia Muñoz is a dedicated advocate for civil and human rights and longtime friend to the Labor movement. The AFL-CIO congratulates Cecilia on her appointment to Director of the Domestic Policy Council and looks forward to working with her to develop and implement a policy agenda that improves the lives of working families.”

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President Barack Obama is introduced by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson before he speaks to employees of the EPA in Washington January 10

Remember the creature known as Joe Miller? The Teabagger was so certain he’d win Alaska’s Senate race last year he took to Twitter….

…and then he lost to Lisa Murkowski.

He had planned on running again …. err, good luck with that Tea Bag Joe:

GOPolitico: If Joe Miller is thinking about another political race in Alaska, he’s got considerable work to do repairing his image. That’s according to the state’s premier pollster, Dave Dittman, who is set to release numbers this week that show the former Senate candidate’s approval rating in the tank.

An AlaskaPoll taken in March found that 73 percent of Alaskans view Miller unfavorably, including 53 percent who put themselves in the “very unfavorable” category.

That leaves just 18 percent who view Miller in a favorable fashion. Nine percent are undecided.

On the other hand, residents appear to be content with their current delegation. All three members receive high “excellent or good” approval ratings – with Democratic Sen. Mark Begich at 57 percent, GOP Rep. Don Young at 63 percent and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski at a sparkling 71 percent.

Senator Lisa Murkowski hands Vice President Joe Biden one of her campaign t-shirts

…..and gets a hug in return. Hope you were watching Joe Miller 😉

….with Marco Rubio and his wife Jeanette

….with Senator Barbara Mikulski

….. with Senator Barbara Boxer and her husband Stewart

…checking to see if his work was done

Back at the office….

JB: “Actually, I used a Macy’s catalog to swear in Rand Paul, so his votes won’t count at all.”

BO: “Good job, Joe!”

President Obama talks with Vice President Biden in the Oval Office while National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Counsel to the President Bob Bauer confer in the Outer Oval Office, Jan. 5, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)